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Pasco man in jail for calling 911 because wife wouldn't leave him alone

 
Published March 23, 2012

Doyle Hardwick found himself back at the Land O'Lakes jail this month, this time for 60 days, all because he wanted to check his Facebook page in peace.

The trouble began brewing the evening of Sept. 24, as Hardwick plied his wife with beer, hoping she would go to bed. She drank. And drank. But didn't feel like going to sleep. So he called 911.

Caller (CLR) "says him and his wife are sitting next to each other," the 911 transcript reads. "CLR is upset because she won't go to bed. Now they are bickering about who has been drinking. CLR has had 4 beers. Wife has had 8 beers. … CLR is upset because she wouldn't let him look at Facebook peacefully."

His wife, Julie Hardwick, 54, waited for the deputy outside the mobile home at 27022 Dayflower Blvd. in the Angus Valley area of Wesley Chapel.

"Come in," she said to the deputy, a Pasco County Sheriff's Office report states. "He's in here."

Doyle Hardwick, 57, was still on the phone with 911 when the deputy walked in. The house was in order and the Hardwicks were calm. Both smelled of alcohol, the report says. The deputy asked the husband to step outside and talk with him.

Doyle Hardwick said he "called 911 because he was upset about his wife sitting next to him and not going to sleep after he gave her beers to go to sleep," the deputy wrote. "His wife was supposed to go to sleep after he gave her the beers because that was their agreement. He wanted me to make his wife not sit next to him and go to bed like she was supposed to."

"I just wanted someone to make my wife do what I wanted her to do," Hardwick told the deputy.

Julie Hardwick told the deputy "her husband asked her to not sit next to him and she told him she didn't feel like sitting anywhere else," the report states. "Her husband told her if she didn't quit sitting next to him and go to bed, he was going to call 911 and the police were going to make her. She told her husband not to call 911 or the police and he did."

Hardwick was arrested that night on a charge of misuse of 911. He pleaded no contest in February and was sentenced to 60 days in jail. He turned himself in to the jail on the appointed date, March 1, although he showed up intoxicated, which was against the terms of his sentencing guidelines, jail records show.

This was not his first act of misuse of 911. He pleaded no contest in 2010 to the same charge and was sentenced to 10 days in jail, court records show. That time, he repeatedly called 911 demanding to speak to someone in code enforcement "regarding neighbors defecating into old vehicle fuel tanks for the past three weeks," a report states.

He also asked the responding deputy for a ride to his daughter's house.

Erin Sullivan can be reached at esullivan@tampabay.com or (727) 869-6229.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: A funny thing happened with the paperwork when Doyle Hardwick turned himself into the Land O'Lakes jail to serve his 60-day sentence for misuse of 911. Hardwick, who had called a deputy to his Angus Valley home back in September because his wife wouldn't leave him alone and go to bed, arrived March 1 at the jail "intoxicated," according to jail records. Judges expect defendants to report to the jail sober. So Hardwick was booked March 1 and began serving his sentence, but the case paperwork went back to the judge because Hardwick did not report to the jail in a satisfactory way. The judge issued an arrest warrant indicating Hardwick was a "no show," and that paperwork was served March 20 on Hardwick, even though he was already in the jail. As a result of this paperwork provided by the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, the original version of this story gave the incorrect day that Hardwick was booked at the jail, and did not include the full circumstances under which the arrest warrant was issued.